User talk:2600:6C40:5E00:173F:8160:541B:735C:CA98

The statement, "The settlement of Kaskaskia also had a large Métis population, many of whom worked for fur companies out of St. Louis, Missouri.[7]", is factually incorrect. I have read the footnoted article on Metis culture, and it is not a good source on topic of St. Louis history and the particulars of Kaskaskia society. St. Louis did not exist until 1764. When the British defeated the French in the Seven Years War in 1763, it took a year for the news to reach Kaskaskia. The British encouraged the French to leave, so the Illinois French mostly migrated across to the West side of the Mississippi.

My ancestors were founding settlers of Kaskaskia, then later St. Louis and Florissant (in St. Louis County). I was raised in Florissant and live in the St. Louis area. My 6x great grandfather Jacques Guillemot dit Lalande was Captain of the Guard at Kaskaskia and married a Kaskaskia tribe woman Marie Tel8kio in 1714 at Kaskaskia. His younger brother likewise married a native woman. Almost all the marriages of French men in the first 20 years there were to native women. The Metis people were fully integrated into the fabric of the community, not relegated to a particular role, though knowledge of both French and native languages made for great opportunities in trade. But farming was the primary focus of the Kaskaskia community, including the Metis. For an authoritative source on the Metis culture of Kaskaskia, I recommend

From Morrissey's report: ″According to Julien Binneteau, another Jesuit, “There are also [Illinois] women married to some of our frenchmen, who would be a good example to the best regulated households in France.”75 The Jesuits were so optimistic about their project, one observer wrote, they increasingly believed that Indians were fully assimilating. They thought that “there is no difference between a Christian Indian and a white woman.”76 The growing community, bound together in a social network of Catholics and farmers, was on a solid footing as it looked forward to the most important population influx in its early history.″

The best current source on the the Illinois Country is Professor Carl Ekberg. His book on the early history of St. Louis is "St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive" https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/53tkw6ps9780252038976.html

I have never contributed to Wikipedia, and am unfamiliar with the protocols involved in shaping content.

Dennis O'Brien